Friday, February 10, 2017

GREAT Britain!

The past three weeks has been quite an amazing journey in Europe with our kids in London and Switzerland as well as at a remarkable Summit on Family Trends in the Alps! I'm starting with our good time in England and will add Switzerland ASAP!

England has become our second home as of late! This is our fourth trip in the past year and a half. However, the three years we spent from 1976-79 when Richard was a Mission President for the church there is starting to seem like a dim memory from the past1 We were young parents in those days with four little children: Saren, was not quite six, Shawni 4 1/2, Josh, 2 1/2 and Saydi 11 months.. Richard was 31 and I was 28 when they called by the church to go to London and supervise 200 young missionaries stationed there. I was especially excited because I had never been outside of US except for Canada and Mexico.

If we could have been transported into the future forty years, we would simply would not have believed what we saw: three of our children would have served as missionaries there, two would have studied abroad with the BYU program and our youngest (one of the ones who served there), would be living there...semi-permanently!

Are we ever happy now that we have a good excuse to go back and visit our beloved country at regular internals and stay in a cozy apartment right in the middle of London!

Charity has been there about 18 months and she knows that city like the back of her hand! What fun we had when we took off with sweet Moses in his new "buggy" and saw the wonders of London:

The Lego store at Leister Square (This Big Ben is made entirely out of Legos):

One of the great wonders of department stores in the city is Fortnum and Mason. The variety of things that you can find in this store are unbelievable! It includes hundreds of varieties of honey and jelly from all over the world

With a lovely little sign that explains each one:

These beautiful tea sets are so very British:

We found astonishing arrays of food at Charity's favorite lunch place in a different part of town:

Dad got tired of walking after that and went home for a nap while Charity and i took off for Notting Hill. Is this a great place or what?

With such a sweet baby in tow we had a memorable afternoon.

For Christmas, Charity and Ian gave us tickets to a Musical called Beautiful: The Carol King Story which we loved! Such an fascinating story and great music from the 50's and 60;s. We recognized most of the songs and Charity and Ian did not! BUT the story and the music were excellent!

Afterward Charity and I ran a few blocks away from their flat for gelato. And not just ordinary gelato. Creative gelato, made to look like flowers, one topped with a yummy macaron!

We spent lots of time walking and walking and walking and my fitbit now loves me! Here we are at the Natural History Museum where I had spent a lot of time as a young mother when we were there with the missionaries. While Richard interviewed missionaries, I walked the halls of nearby museums with new babies (I gave birth to two while we were there). Who knew that I'd be back four decades later watching fun tricks with a GRAND baby?

Although most people in Britain are "so lovely" and "so helpful and kind, just like anywhere else, you find a mean old man once in a while who is obsessed with following the rules. One day on our journey on the Tube an enthusiastic group of young musicians jumped on the tube at our door with instruments and a "boom box" and started to play some lively music to a add a little spice to the bored riders and with the hopes of getting a few monetary contributions from the listeners. An older man immediately marched up to them and told them they were NOT supposed to be doing that! They tried to encourage him to enjoy the music but he persisted and got more and more angry. Other passengers encouraged him to stop pestering them with no avail. Again I wish that I knew how to post video because, red-faced and totally exasperated, the dour old guy marched over to the emergency stop button and pulled it to the astonishment of the musicians. The train immediately slowed down and stopped at the next station. The musicians made a quick exit amidst authorities there who were trying to figure out what was going on. The man in the trench coat stormed away! Yikes! What a guy!

We left the next day for Switzerland where would be having fun with the Eyre Family there and attending a Summit in the Alps on World Family Trends (post coming next).

Then we went back to London where we spent one day with our family there before Charity, Ian and Moses took off for Sri Lanka and and the Maldives. It's Ian's last few days of paternity leave (the Europeans have got maternity and paternity leave right)! She'll be posting that great trip on her blog soon at drippingwithpassion.blogspot.com.

We did have one more fun day with Charity in London before they left. While Ian was wrapping things up at work we took a walk over to the place where Moses was born and took some pictures of Moses at this very cute age!

Before they left Charity took us to a fun restaurant just around the corner from her house called The Flat Iron. It was a unique menu with only two choices for a main course: steak sliced beautifully on a flat iron or a hamburger. There were many sides and sauces on the menu to go with the meat! Reasonable prices (in fact everything seemed to be reasonably priced because of the strength of the dollar right now).

At the end of the meal we were give a little charm to present at the front door where we were given a yummy ice cream cone. The flavor of the day was chocolate with salted caramel

While we waited for our cones we could see a butcher cutting up a beef carcass through a window on the left which would soon be consumed by the customers. Seeing that made me sort of sad that we had just eaten part of a similar creature! :)

After our little family left I have to admit that we still managed to have quite a good time!

We have discovered that The National Portrait Gallery is one of our favorite places in London! Since it is so close to Charity's flat, we visited several times! I was thrilled to learn that the book I am presently reading about William Wilberforce's decades long struggle for abolition in Britain was represented in a whole roomful of portraits there The book is Amazing Grace and I was astonished to see the portraits of so many great people involved in that great cause. I took pictures of almost all in that room along with the explanation of the picture so I would know what the people looked like as I read their names in the book.

What a man William Wilberforce was and what an incredible thing he and his colleagues did to finally bring to pass freedom for hundreds of thousands of horribly treated African slaves along with promoting better moral values in Great Britain!

I love this unfinished portrait of his kind and gentle face. His story is story is just remarkable!

Here they are at a the Conference for the Abolition of Slavery led by Clarkston. Every face in the crowd showed someone who was actually at the conference.

At Charity's suggestion before she left, we had lunch at the top of the Gallery with breathtaking views of London and some great food too!

Another favorite places in London that also happens to be in Charity's neighborhood is Covent Garden! There are always fun things to see and entertainment in the courtyards!

We were there the day that Apple announced unexpected positive earnings and the Apple Store there was packed!

Apple is known for their use of glass in their stores and though much of their building is exposed brick, they did have a beautiful glass staircase which was well-used!

Covent Garden is filled with beautiful streets and fun things to see.

I love seeing these buses. If only our ancestors who were shunned and abused and excluded from society when they lived in England could see this bus! Even though they might not want to see the play, and most people haven't, this is great advertising for the Mormon church don't you think? :)

We did not get to this play but just seeing this building is almost as good!

We did ride bikes over to see a matinee of a Cirque show at Royal Albert Hall which was astonishing!

And Richard bought a new hat on our way to see The Glass Menagerie. Such a great play!

We finished off our "show fetish" with Aladdin! Amazing costumes and a stellar Genie with an astonishing silk curtain that simply fell at the beginning instead of being drawn!

We had loved our three weeks in Europe but we were happy to pack our bags, clean the apartment for friends of Charity's who were coming to stay for a few days while Charity and Ian were gone and fly on home!

I love those 10 hour flights during the daytime when I can get so much done without interruption Those long flight (when they aren't overnighters) are simply one of my favorite things!

3 comments:

I would love for you to see the Book of Mormon play and hear your thoughts! I saw it in London and am seeing it in Melbourne next week I love it so much! Interesting so hear members of the church thoughts on the play, if you find it humourous or rude. Maybe one day!